While browsing the antique shops of downtown Orange last year, I came upon a nondescript book called “Orange County Journal, 1966-1967.” It’s basically an almanac of the county, but was published “as a public service by the Republican Central Committee of Orange County.” It’s a fascinating snapshot of the county in the mid-1960s.
One of the articles is “Water Development in Orange County,” authored by OC Water District Secretary Manager Howard W. Crook, Assistant Secretary Thelma Willoughby and Consulting Engineer John Toups. In light of tonight’s OC Water District meeting on the proposed Poseidon desalination plant in Huntington Beach, I thought this excerpt from to appropriate for a Throwback Thursday post:
Say what you will, but that was far more can-do era when state and local leaders still thought big, before a thicket of regulatory red tape made any large-scale public or private development or infrastructure much more costly in terms of time and money to accomplish (if accomplished at all). This was the era of the California State Water Project, when there was a consensus about government moving energetically to meet its obligation to provide sufficient infrastructure for a growing state. It’s evident in the ambitious scale of what was called the Bolsa Island Nuclear Power and Desalting Project: built a man-made island for a desalination plant powered by two nuclear generators, pumping out 150 million gallons per annum and going operational within five years.
How long has the seemingly interminable Poseidon approval process been dragging on for now? It’s astounding when you consider how comparatively quickly the great hydroelectric dam projects along the Colorado River were finished, or that it took only six years (almost half of that while the Civil War was raging) to build the 1,907-mile Transcontinental Railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and across the empty prairie while being continuously harassed by hostile Indians.
The OC Register is right: it is time to move forward with this project as quickly as possible.
So very true it was and era of forward and progressive thinkers. To bad we have fallen into the moras of non thinkers and do little. If Jerry Brown would build a pipeline from the north to northern California like Mulholland did to the Eastern Sierra instead of a train to now where we would all be better off.
Thelma Willoughby…..Grandma Lives!!!!!!
My Mom was super and the best. She is sorely missed!!